Ezekiel 12: 25 But I the Lord will speak what I will, and it shall be fulfilled without delay. For in your days, you rebellious house, I will fulfill whatever I say, declares the Sovereign Lord.

That God is sovereign over everyone and everything, I believe, is the most stupendous concept for the human mind to grasp. The very idea that someone over-rules every center of power in the earth and can turn around any circumstance to bring an outcome completely opposite to what is anticipated or considered logical, is awesome to me. Usually such outcomes are deemed miraculous when they are good outcomes, and so they are.

Confusion arises, however, when the outcomes are not good. Here in Ezekiel 12, the Lord has used Ezekiel the prophet as a Power Point presentation to demonstrate to the Israelites what their future will look like – how they will be exiled to Babylon and how wretched their lives will become. Why? They had become a rebellious people, practicing idol worship and ignoring God completely. They were paying no heed to what Ezekiel was saying and doing. Instead they concluded that what he was warning them about was for a time in the distant future. The Lord was saying the exact opposite. The same attitude persists today towards the imminent return of Christ.

God can and does intervene in our lives, sometimes with immediacy to get our attention and bring glory to his name. And often “glory” has to be viewed as the result of a move of God in defense of his own name. It is an act that inspires awe and wonder and the realization that no human can duplicate it.

God judges evil. Scripture is replete with examples and this was one case where God was using Ezekiel to give fair warning to his people. God also moves in the behalf of those who trust him and does the impossible. Facing an impossible situation once, the Holy Spirit spoke to me:

“Even as I bring daybreak, darkness followed by light, even so shall your situation be turned around. You will scarcely believe the speed, for I have said and shall I not do? You must understand that I am the Lord God Almighty and I do not do the things the way you expect. I shake and I rearrange things and no one can stop me. And when I am finished, men shall marvel at what I have done. So stand by and see the glory of your God.